A Chance Meeting [Ludwig]

[Gilbert Fredrick Beilschmidt]

The sun was shining warmly, reflecting off the crystal clear lake. Ducks swam across it, seemingly as if floating with the current. Nearby on a bench is where Gilbert sat, watching the birds fly and people play with their animals. Frisbees were flying and dogs were jumping here and there. There were even a few people just walking their dogs, not making any effort at all to do more to wear them out. Smiling a little bit as seeing how peaceful everyone was, he reached into his pocket and took out his notebook, opening it to the page he had stopped on before. Before his eyes sat the beginning of the latest story he was working on. It was more notes on the potential story than anything. Little facts here and there that outlined the whole story. Of course it was written in his special code so no one could take his story idea for their own. A sigh left his lips as he looked up at the sky. He liked writing, he really did…it just bored him sometimes. To this day it was still hard for Gilbert to focus on things.

Hearing a dog bark in the distance, he lifted his head and red-violet eyes came to rest on the open notebook in his hands. Pages flipped as a light wind blew, pages without writing revealed themselves. No writing scared the pages, blemishing the white spaces in between the lines. A light smirk formed on his lips as he lifted his pencil and let the dark graphite mark the pages, forever running the crisp, clean look. But in its place, would be something even better. A work of art would emerge. Maybe not something that would ever hang in The Louvre, but it was art nether-the-less. Once finished with it, Gilbert held it up in front of him and grinned. The picture was just a quick doodle, an amorphous sketch that vaguely resembled absolutely nothing. Hearing a bark, Gilbert saw a puppy running free, it was cute at how the little legs carried him along.

“Isn’t that a cute puppy~”

[Deleted]

"Aster!"

The golden retriever puppy was far too happy to be outside in the park on such a beautiful day, and as such, she'd apparently decided to stop listening to Ludwig.

"Aster, heel! Come here!"

Aster continued to ignore him, her attention captivated instead by a particularly interesting squirrel, which she promptly chased until it scampered up a tree out of her reach. She barked her tiny frustrations out while staring up longingly at the tree until another squirrel ran across the ground in her field of vision and she took off after that instead. Ludwig let out a quiet groan; he had been sneaking up on her with the leash and had been so, so close to capturing her. His two older dogs, Blackie and Berlitz, remained dutifully at his side, watching the puppy caper about with almost palpable disdain. Ludwig really couldn't fault Aster for wanting to play; he'd brought his dogs here for that purpose. But his anxiety level spiked as Aster suddenly lost interest in the second squirrel and took a sharp right, heading straight for the pond.

"Nein! No! Aster-"

With only a split-second to react before he spent the rest of the afternoon giving his dog a bath, Ludwig dug into the pocket of his overcoat and yanked out a squeaky bone. The loud eep eep did what his commands had not: the puppy whirled around, her attention now on the toy.

"Go get it!" Ludwig flung the bone out towards an expanse of grass and Aster took off towards it; Blackie and Berlitz hesitated only a second longer before racing after the puppy. Relieved, the German shoved his hands into his coat pockets, half-smiling as he watched all three dogs converge on the toy: Aster seized it and the game changed to one of keep-away, with the puppy racing under and around the two larger dogs as they tried to steal the bone.

"Isn't that a cute puppy."

Ludwig hadn't seen the bench, nor had he noticed the man sitting there. But now that he had seen him, the politician had a hard time looking away: while the stranger seemed to be out enjoying the nice day like everyone else, his appearance was unusual - unique, even. Ludwig couldn't recall ever seeing anyone with eyes that color before. Noticing the book or journal the man carried, Ludwig straightened himself up a little more and put on his polite I'm-out-in-public-so-I-have-to-keep-appearances-up face.

"I hope she didn't bother you," he spoke, nodding at the book in the man's pale hands. "She's just very excited to be outside after all of the bad weather." Aster chose this moment to come trotting back with the toy, followed closely by Berlitz and Blackie. Ludwig accepted the bone from her and scratched her behind the ears before standing up and throwing the toy again.

[Gilbert Fredrick Beilschmidt]

"I hope she didn't bother you, she’s just excited to be out after all the bad weather."

Gilbert couldn’t help but notice the man had a soothing voice, one that would be pleasing to just listen too. It could easily put him to sleep if he talked long enough. Blinking when he realized that the blond man was waiting for an answer, he stuck the notebook into his pocket and nodded to the man.

"Nein, no bother done. Just enjoying the day myself, can't get up the motivation to do much more than sit here and watch the happenings."

Grinning wide, he moved over for the man to sit down if he wanted too, Gilbert looked back at the puppy, who he had heard called Aster and, away from the blond man., he tried to ease him. He had seen the way the man tensed with his journal and being around people. With most people he wouldn’t care, it was part of his job to get under their skins and get the story, but he found he wanted to with this man for some reason. He knew it was a form of attraction, yes the man was handsome, but it was the attraction of the familiar. He had to figure it out. Had he seen that strong jaw line, and the way the man carried himself, he could tell that he was muscular with the broad shoulders. This man had a story, he could tell.

"Names the awesome one~ but you can call me Gilbert. “ He grinned and offered out his hand to the man. He had a feeling this was the start of something that could impact him greatly. Always trust your instincts after all. Following instincts had gotten him here after all, a decent job in a country that while it may rain a lot, could be quite beautiful if you looked hard enough.

"Those are the most interesting shade of blue eyes I have ever seen."

[Deleted]

Ludwig's perfect composure got a hairline fracture when the other man replied; he instantly recognized the German, which was somewhat of a pleasant surprise. He didn't come across ex-pats from any German-speaking countries quite as often as he would have liked to, although he realized that the other man could be just pulling his leg: it was a well-known fact that Ludwig hailed from Berlin, and sometimes he got teased or insulted about that. He sincerely hoped that wasn't the case here. It would ruin what had up until now been a pleasant afternoon.

"Ah, really? Ludwig replied, with the hint of a smile. "I envy you. This is just a short break for me. But it's certainly a good time to be out-of-doors." Raising his eyebrows a little as the other man motioned for him to sit down, Ludwig shrugged and took the offered spot. His dogs returned with the toy, and he flung it out for them to fetch again. Killing a little bit of time here couldn't really hurt, could it?

"Pleased to meet you," Ludwig replied, taking the other man's hand and shaking it with practiced firmness. He found it both amusing and a bit strange that the man didn't recognize him; he was on the TV and in the papers often enough. But perhaps this Gilbert was just a tourist, or someone who didn't follow politics all that closely. Ludwig certainly couldn't blame him; politics got on his own nerves every once in a while, and that was his bloody job. It was just the nature of the government to be ridiculous at times. "I'm Ludwig," he offered, before settling back against the bench. The compliment caught him off-guard, and Ludwig briefly wondered if he was about to be hit on. He gave a nervous laugh instead of a reply at first.

"Uh, that's kind of you to say," he managed once he'd collected himself. "Apparently I get them from my grandfather." Ludwig didn't want to return the compliment; Gilbert seemed like an extremely confident person, but everyone had some little flaw they didn't like to hear about, and he didn't want to risk insulting the man by mentioning his red eyes or his pale hair.

"If I'm not mistaken," he said, hitting on a decent subject, "you speak a little bit of German? I heard you say nein. Are you a student, perhaps?" This was shaping up to be a rather strange meeting.

[Gilbert Fredrick Beilschmidt]

"Ah, really? I envy you. This is just a short break for me. But it's certainly a good time to be out-of-doors."


Gilbert could only feel satisfied that this man had taken the offered seat. Not many people upon meeting him would sit down next to him. It was his awesomeness wasn’t it? He was too awesome and it took people a while to get over how awesome he was. Though it appeared that not much got under Ludwig’s skin. It also seemed like he was the type of man who was hard to impress and didn’t usually think things were awesome. How did he know this? Journalist intuition of course. He had to be able to tell many things from simple gestures in order to get the story he wanted. Not that he was going for a story here, but long practiced skills were hard not to use, especially when he was doing it without noticing. Giving himself a mental shake, he came back to the present scene in time to watch the dog run away again, chasing after the toy. The dog was a good breed and seemed well trained.

“I'm Ludwig,"

“Ludwig huh? Nice, strong German name. It suits you.”

Shrugging at the piece of information that the eyes were from his grandfather, he nodded. That’s how it always was, eyes from a grandparent, hair from the other. All their features were passed down from parents and grandparents, through the genetic lineage of time. Though from the looks of it, it looked like Ludwig inherited all of the good traits in his family. Gilbert could have almost had been a bit jealous of this stranger, but he was too awesome for that. He was so awesome he had features that screamed to the world that he was so awesome no one else could handle looking like he did.

“If I'm not mistaken, "you speak a little bit of German? I heard you say nein. Are you a student, perhaps?"

“Ja, ich spreche Deutsch. Ich habe alle mein Leben, und wie für einen Studenten, nein.”

Hopefully that was enough to show that he was fluent in it. “I work in media, not that I get the interesting stories, but I like my job. I stick to my morals and won’t go out of my way to slander people. Unless they deserve I then you can find backhanded words in my work.”

Nodding with that, he let his eyes crinkle as he grinned at the man. Always face life with a grin, that was his motto.

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SPOILER: Click to show

{translate}Yes I speak German, have all my life. As for a student, no.

[Deleted]

As he watched his dogs jump about and roll in the grass, Ludwig tried to focus on his conversation with Gilbert, which was steadily growing weird. The man had a kind of exuberance that made the discussion lively, but his remarks had the politician wondering if he weren't being pranked in some way and that the whole thing was being filmed for the amusement of the masses. His suspicions rose when Gilbert dubbed his name a "nice, strong German one" that apparently suited him. Ludwig felt ambivalent about his name now, but when he'd been younger, he hadn't liked it. It was archaic and odd, a name better fitting with old dead German kings than with the new millennium. His relatives had teased him, and no English-speaker knew how to pronounce it.

“Er, thank you," he offered in response, keeping the confusion he felt carefully away from his face. Thankfully, the conversation turned somewhere different; Gilbert spoke German at an apparently native level, which explained a lot.

“Ah, so," the blond man replied. “Kommen Sie aus Deutschland?" That seemed to be the only possible explanation.

Ludwig's eyes widened just a bit when Gilbert explained that he worked in media. That made everything much more clear. He was a journalist, or a paparazzo of some kind, obviously. Ludwig didn't trust for an instant the claim the other man made about sticking to his morals; he knew this kind of person far too well. Disappointed, Ludwig realized he'd have to be even more careful about what he said and did from now on. Or perhaps he should just excuse himself and leave… but his gaze went back to his dogs, who were still enjoying themselves, oblivious to the situation Ludwig was now in. It couldn't be helped; they were dogs. They didn't know about politics. They still deserved a fair chance to run and play outside, though, Ludwig reasoned, even if he had to fend off this Gilbert character for a few more minutes.

“So you're here on some kind of assignment, I'm guessing," Ludwig offered, his tone polite; he did not return the grin that Gilbert flashed at him. “Or just looking for your next big scoop."

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SPOILER: Click to show

{Translate}Are you from Germany?

[Gilbert Fredrick Beilschmidt]

“Kommen Sie aus Deutschland?"

“Ja ich bin. Ich komme aus Berlin.* Born and raised actually. We stayed there for a few years und then moved here. I miss that town; I should visit, though I don’t have much of a reason too.”

Shrugging, he kept his eyes watching the dogs run to and fro as they enjoyed the nice weather, finally able to play unhindered it seemed. Though out of the corner of his eye, he saw how the man reacted to his working in the media and he was right on what he was thinking, he should have kept that bit of news to himself. Moving to tuck his notebook back in the satchel at his feet, he shrugged at the words. He should have known better to say that’s what he did, but Gilbert didn’t usually lie. Not always told the whole truth yes, but outright lie, no… well, not unless his life was in danger of course.

“So you're here on some kind of assignment, I'm guessing, or just looking for your next big scoop."

“Nein, neither. I’m guessing you’ve never heard of me and I’m not surprised. I usually write about the restaurants I visit and the cases I’m assigned; and believe me, they give the juicy stuff to the other reports and I get things like dog shows.”

With a move of his hand, he waved to the side as if to dismiss the topic, but instead grinned wide “I know you don’t believe me, after all, you don’t know me besides this meeting, but just watch for my articles, you won’t see any word of this meeting or anything. After all, what kind of shit would I be to make a new fried and then go and write about them. That’s one way to lose a friendship and trust right there.” With a slow movement, he booped Ludwig on the nose “Just you wait mein fruend, you’ll see. Once Gilbert gives his word, there’s no going back on it, no matter what.”



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SPOILER: Click to show

{*}Yes I am, I'm from Berlin.

[Deleted]

So, another man from Berlin. Ludwig felt only slightly surprised: it was true he didn’t run into very many of his countrymen on a day-to-day basis. But the ones who lived in the big cities tended to do the most traveling, mostly for business. When the man mentioned not having much of a reason to return, Ludwig shrugged.

”I haven’t been back in a while either,” he admitted, ”mostly because work keeps me busy.” He’d probably have to visit his parents if he went back, too, and he didn’t relish that prospect at all. Ludwig did feel homesick from time to time, though, and eventually that would probably win over and he’d schedule himself a short vacation. Maybe in another year, though… things were too chaotic now, and he couldn’t abandon his coworkers or his friends — or the ones who fit both labels, like Arthur and Sadik and Clara. He let those plans drift out of his thoughts as he continued to watch his dogs run around. Thankfully, all those free hours he’d spent training them were paying off: none of them were aiming for the mud puddles that the rainy recent weather had left behind, although Aster certainly got dangerously close once or twice.

The journalist, meanwhile, was still talking to him. Ludwig bit back a sigh, trying to think of a way to extricate himself from this situation; it had started feeling awkward.

”I can’t say I have heard of you,” he affirmed vaguely, ”but, er, I’m sure if you keep working hard, you’ll get the good stories sooner or later. Everyone has to work their way up from the bottom of the ladder.” He himself hadn’t gotten too much press recently, but he’d always been careful with what he said and did. Still, the German felt mildly thankful that whatever newspaper Gilbert worked for wouldn’t be running any stories about him — and if they did, well … Gilbert had mentioned dog shows, hadn’t he? What could they make from a simple chat with him in the park with his dogs? Nothing. Ludwig felt satisfied in that, even if he hadn’t managed to dodge the poke in the nose the other man abruptly gave him.

”What?” he blurted out, hastily rubbing the spot, his exterior calm as always, ”oh… yes, of course, that’s very good to know.” His judgement of this man as a distinct weirdo had been correct, it seemed. Ludwig gave the other a weak smile and stood from the bench, straightening his jacket. ”You’ll have to forgive me, Gilbert, but I really shouldn’t stay any longer, I’ve dawdled a bit as is… it was nice talking to you.” He gave a short whistle and his dogs came running over. ”Auf Wiedersehen,” the politician offered with a short nod, ”enjoy the nice weather.” Gilbert was certainly an unusual character, but Ludwig didn’t know whether or not he liked him — and being poked in the face and called a friend by a veritable stranger certainly didn’t please him at all. But at least he’d have a strange story to tell his friends later. With his dogs now following behind him obediently, he set back off across the park.

[Gilbert Fredrick Beilschmidt]

”You’ll have to forgive me, Gilbert, but I really shouldn’t stay any longer, I’ve dawdled a bit as is… it was nice talking to you. Auf Wiedersehen.”

“Auf Wiedersehen to you too Ludwig~”

Leaning back to relax on the bench, his eyes followed the man and his dogs until he couldn’t see them anymore. It was interesting having met this man; he seemed very down to earth for a politician. That was a good thing though, the would could just more men like him in politics who seemed to just want to be themselves and who weren’t overly involved in what they did, who didn’t get a big head and a mightier-than-thou attitude from it. If more politicians were like the man this Ludwig seemed to be, the world would be a better place indeed. Looking down at the pocket he kept his notebook in, he knew he couldn’t make a story out of this; he had nothing to write on. But even if he did, he promised he wouldn’t, and there was one thing Gilbert always did and that was to stick to his promises.

Gilbert could only wish he had found out more about this man, he seemed like a really good guy; honestly, he felt like if he could get past the walls Ludwig had, that they could be great friends. For some reason, he couldn’t tell why, he just wanted to get to know this man, have him in his life somehow. It would be important somehow, he could tell.

“Gott, why did you have to work for the government?”

Gilbert wanted to hack Ludwig’s computer, find out why this blond politician had set off bells in his head, but he couldn’t. He didn’t need the government finding out about his hacking skills, not that he couldn’t have gotten around there firewalls, but he didn’t feel like this honestly required that much effort. He had other trails of information he could follow first, including meeting with him again.

“Just you wait Ludwig, we will meet again.”